Category:Consumption

Some information on this topic is in Where Are We Now. See also Solid Waste, as well as Plastic and Sustainability, and Labor. To counter consumption, see technique of Culture Jamming.

Articles/Reports

A new report says half the food in US is wasted. But Bootstrap Compost is an entrepreneur who picks it up. Starbucks and others are looking to recycle it into plastic.

Collaborative Consumption is named by Grist as trend of year more, i.e., the fine art of networked, consensual mooching. At the risk of sounding like a dangerous commie: It turns out there's basically no reason to be the sole owner of anything ever again. A great directory. More programs 5/12. Interview with Shareable founder on his epiphany. see social entrepreneurs). 1/13

Bike-sharing program peer to peer. 12/12 Other programs somewhat controversial. See also Solid Waste.

Living large in a tiny house.

How I Survived Breaking Up with My Car from Yes Magazine.

Are your clothes toxic? Maybe a good reason to buy at thrift stores.

My Old Kentucky Conservatism By MAURICE MANNING explores local sustainability.

Levi's goes green 10/12.

Earth Overshoot Day Aug 22. Since 1970, we've been using more resources than can be replenished, meaning we keep going deeper and deeper into the hole. Each year, "Earth Overshoot Day" (which isn't really that great a name) comes sooner.

Apple opts out of green standards. 7.12 (e-waste)

Conflict minerals from Africa 6.12

No New Stuff Challenge 6/12.

Is your store tossing good food? Go Freegan? 6/12.

Worldwatch Institute has many fine free reports including Good Stuff? A Behind-the-Scenes Guide to the Things We Buy.

Radioactive Fallout From iPhones and Flat-Screen TVs? also Rare Earth minerals needed for cell phones, hard on workers. 2/12

Is your stuff falling apart? Thank Walmart. 11/11.

Resources Revolution is a report that explains how we can shift production sustainably to meet future needs.

American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do about It) by Jonathan Bloom.

"Phone Story" the iPhone app contains a mini-game exploring a different problem in the consumer electronics supply chain. How would you like to force children to mine precious metals, save suicidal workers from jumping to their deaths so they can labor another day, or find the cheapest way to dispose of mountains of e-waste—all while keeping productivity up so you can toss shiny trinkets to adoring consumers? Related: Renegade iphone apps show true costs.

Extensive new report, includes video ***

Interesting chart of our collective ecological footprint

Watch the spread of Wal-marts Interactive map.

Article on poor conditions of electronic assembly workers in Asia/ 11/10. Read More with images.

Ashley Judd on rape minerals and how you can help.

Ideas about soap from BoingBoing.

== Websites == (see also DIY)

My Plastic-Free Life Think we can't live without plastic? Think again. In 2007 I committed to stop buying any new plastic & I've almost succeeded! Won't you join me?

Yerdle.com, a site where friends can share and swap items (see audio).

Got stuff to get rid of? Need free stuff? Freecycle.org

Swap.com allows you to trade books, clothes, music etc, even locally.

Sourcemap is an open source project about where things come from. You can create your own maps, and add information. Other eco-maps

Goodguide to 70,000 products, including a way to to get info on how earth-friendly a product is by scanning barcode with your cell phone. Slideshow of best and worst companies. Abe's Market has natural products (hmmn).

How To Save The World With Your Old Cell Phone. Every day 450,000 cell phones are discarded in the United States. But there's a better way to get rid of them. With Hope Phones you can donate your old phone to help healthcare workers and medical clinics in developing countries. The not for profit service allows donors to print a free shipping label and send their old phones in for recycling. The phone’s value is then used to purchase usable, recycled cell phones for healthcare workers in various third world areas.

Repair:

The Endangered Repairman from Yes Magazine.

iFixit, a free resource that provides comprehensive repair guides, troubleshooting tips and a community of technicians ready to help you fix your gadget, household appliance or vehicle. TechShop has any tool you could possibly need.

Dutch Repair Cafes fix stuff for free to keep it out of landfills.

Make Magazine sponsors the annual Maker Faire in late May. It has lots of great ideas/groups working on sustainability, for example water recycling, solar cooking, worms/composting. green projects include a house made from a futon, and sea scavanger.

Books

Stuff makes us sad, especially in America. new book, UCLA study.

The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World by Paul Gilding.

Vital Signs 2012 is a new report by the Worldwatch Institute (free reports) that takes stock of global consumption to offer up-to-date facts and figures to guide our stewardship of the Earth's resources. It paints a picture of skyrocketing population, disappearing forests, and increasing consumption peppered with a few bright spots.

The Deadly Scramble for the World's Last Resources Klare's new book. review.

In 2002 Dinah Sanders started a personal holiday called Discardia. As she writes in her book, Discardia: More Life, Less Stuff, her quarterly festival celebrates “unconsumption, the slow movement, downshifting, and voluntary simplicity.” In other words, it’s about getting rid of stuff so you can enjoy a richer life. Sanders (who maintains a blog called Discardia) believes that many people mistakenly seek the good life by acquiring lots of things and experiences and then try to shoehorn these into an already overcrowded life.

Force of Nature: The Unlikely Story of Wal-Mart's Green Revolution by Edward Humes.

David Suzuki has a new book (audio interview) "a, brief, astonishingly readable and uplifting book called The Legacy: An Elder's Vision for our Sustainable Future."

American-style consumer capitalism is simply unsustainable, warns former White House adviser James Gustave Speth in his new book, The Bridge at the Edge of the World. (video interview at UC Berzerkely) (another video on economy vs ecology). A co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Speth has been an environmentalist for more than three decades. Speth is dean and professor in the practice of environmental policy at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. audio interview.

The 100 Thing Challenge: How I Got Rid of Almost Everything, Remade My Life, and Regained My Soul interview in Boingboing

No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies is a book by Canadian journalist Naomi Klein. Video version available online for free.

Confessions of an Eco-Sinner by Fred Pearce, traces where our things come from (includes excerpt). Audio and text interviews

You Are Here : exposing the vital link between what we do and what that does to our planet / Thomas M. Kostigen New York, NY : HarperOne, c2008 McH Stacks - GF75 .K674 2008 Link

The Shadows of Consumption : consequences for the global environment / Peter Dauvergne Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c2008 McH Stacks - HC79.C6 D38 2008

Humanity's Footprint : momentum, impact, and our global environment / Walter K. Dodds New York : Columbia University Press, c2008 McHenry Stacks - GF75 .D65 2008 Link

Bill McKibben author of classic End of Nature (excerpt)

Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (excerpt) 2007 interview on book

and new book The Bill McKibben Reader: Pieces from an Active Life 2008 interview.

Everything in Its Path By Kai T. Erikson Recounts the devastating personal and communal effects of the 1972 Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, disaster on a tightly knit Appalachian community suddenly uprooted and dispersed.

Why Consumer Culture is Good for the Economy, the Environment, and Your Soul Basic Books, 2011. Could spending be virtuous and thrift bad? Left-wing economic and cultural historian James Livingston thinks so. He suggests -- taking on the 19th century Populists, the Frankfurt School, and current economic orthodoxy along the way -- that consumption is good for social justice and the environment. Livingston argues that, in place of austerity and frugality, investment should be socialized, wages increased, and the workweek shortened. Link with audio interview.

Images and Infographics

Infographic: How Many Resources are Left?

Stunning images of accumulated consumer goods and resources by Chris Jordan. TEDtalk video PBS episode

Photographer Edward Burtynsky documents how humans alter the world, and to a lesser degree the people engaged in doing the work (example). Video of TEDtalk accepting his award. A video, Manufactured Landscapes, (trailer) was made about his trip to China and its factories and the Three Gorges Dam. Excerpt.

Manufactured Landscapes. Photographer Ed Burtynsky goes to China to document manufacturing and E-waste.

Where the Workers Who Made Your iPhone Sleep at Night

Matthew Island, a graphic parable.

Walmart

Walmart infographic. Watch the spread of Wal-marts Interactive map

Video

The Story of Stuff is an excellent overview ****The Story of Bottled Water from the people who brought you The Story of Stuff.

The Story of Cell Phones (video) and what to do about them. Link.

Brilliant classic: Advertising and the End of the World text summary (not validated, and not a substitute for lecture). (audio download).

No Logo: Brands, Globalization & Resistance. Bestselling author Naomi Klein's account of the rise of international branding and the anti-corporate movements it has inspired. TEDtalk.

Daniel Goleman has a new book Ecological Intelligence His blog also has an interesting related TEDtalk video. Extensive talk at Google. Goleman reveals why so many of the products that are labeled green are a mirage, and illuminates our wild inconsistencies in response to the ecological crisis. Drawing on cutting-edge research, Goleman explains why we as shoppers are in the dark over the hidden impacts of the goods and services we make and consume, victims of a blackout of information about the detrimental effects of producing, shipping, packaging, distributing, and discarding the goods we buy.

Tristram Stuart: The global food waste scandal TEDtalk. (his book).

At the head of the Fair Labor Association, Auret van Heerden takes a practical approach to workers' rights, persuading corporations and NGOs to protect labor in global supply chains TEDtalk video

The Uniform Project started in 2009 when a young woman realized she was drowning in the doldrums of an advertising career. To counter the uninspired demands of the corporate world, she came up with an unusual creative challenge; to wear the same dress for an entire year -- but, and this is where the real challenge came in, she'd have to make it look unique every single day and do so without buying anything new, a fundraiser to support the Akanksha Foundation. Google Talk video.

Bag It documentary on plastic.

Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me) dives into the hidden but influential world of brand marketing, on his quest to make a completely sponsored film about sponsorship. The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.

Are mushrooms the new plastic? (TEDtalk video)

Tapped, a new documentary about the bottled water industry from director Stephanie Soechtig and the producers of Who Killed the Electric Car?, is a pretty damning look at how consumers have been tricked into spending too much money on water packaged in plastic and quite often not as clean as what's available from the faucet.trailer

Jason Clay is a WWF vice-president who works with big corporations to transform the global markets they operate in, so we can produce more with less land, less water and less pollution TEDtalk video.

Filmmaker David Parker directed this short video, "Light," to more viscerally express the energy wasted from electric lights unnecessarily left on.

Designer Jessi Arrington packed nothing for TED but 7 pairs of undies, buying the rest of her clothes in thrift stores around LA.

Collaborative consumption TEDtalk.

Human Footprint (2008) 90 min. What makes up an average human life today and how everything we do has impact on the world around us? In a playful, surprising and thought-provoking portrait of our time on earth, National Geographic demonstrates, in a series of remarkable visuals, what makes up an average human life today and how everything we do has impact on the world around us. In this unique journey through life, it shows all the people you will ever know, how much waste you will produce, the amount of fuel you’ll consume and how much you’ve got to pack in during your 2,475,526,000 seconds on earth.

No Impact Man is a book and documentary film about a New Yorker radically changing his lifestyle for a year NPR audio.No Impact Man is the story of a family in New York that does an experiment: live for a year without impacting the environment. Surprisingly entertaining and enlightening.

Consuming Kids throws desperately needed light on the practices of a relentless multi-billion dollar marketing machine that now sells kids and their parents everything from junk food and violent video games to bogus educational products and the family car. Drawing on the insights of health care professionals, children's advocates, and industry insiders, the film focuses on the explosive growth of child marketing in the wake of deregulation, showing how youth marketers have used the latest advances in psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience to transform American children into one of the most powerful and profitable consumer demographics in the world. Related videos from MEF.org

FAQ: Going Green examines the ways consumers can make small changes in their lives that can have a big impact on the environment. Useful CA links. 4/10 (Realplayer)

Our laptops, game consoles and cell phone use Coltan, which is at the center of civil war and much suffering in the Democratic Republic of Congo. (See Africa page). You can help Congo gorillas by recycling cell phones. 60 MINUTES segment on gold, war and rape in DR of Congo. 11/09

Trashed is a provocative investigation of one of the fastest growing industries in North America: the garbage business. It examines a fundamental element of modern American culture - the disposal of what our society defines as "waste," fast approaching a half billion tons annually. The program analyzes the causes and effects of the seemingly innocuous act of "taking out the garbage" while showcasing the individuals, activists, corporate and advocacy groups working to affect change and reform the current model.

Barry Schwartz is a sociology professor at Swarthmore College and author of The Paradox of Choice. In this talk, he persuasively explains how and why the abundance of choice in modern society is actually making us miserable. (TEDtalk video)

E-Waste segment on 60 Minutes 11/08 (includes video).

Extensive new report, includes video ***

Utopia, Part 3: The World's Largest Shopping Mall The world's largest shopping mall, in Guangzhou, China, is almost entirely empty. POV PBS

John Gerzema says there's an upside to the recent financial crisis -- the opportunity for positive change. He identifies four major cultural shifts driving new consumer behavior and shows how businesses are evolving to connect with thoughtful spending. TEDtalk

Graham Hill: Less Stuff, More Happiness (top TEDtalk of 2010).

Inventor Saul Griffith explains why, in terms of energy consumption,it is better to buy a single high-quality product once than many cheaper, inferior versions over a lifetime. Longnow.org.

Jeff Garlin shares his hysterical and eye-opening journey to reduce his waistline and his carbon footprint during the production of the seventh season of HBOs Curb Your Enthusiasm. (Google talk 4/10).

Santa Cruzin’ Philips Patton 2011 Is it actually possible to be “free?” How can you live the life you really want without a boring job to pay the bills? Santa Cruzin’ is the true story of five young friends attempting to follow their dreams, “Santa Cruz-style.” Over six months of their lives they face their demons, overcome obstacles, and climb very tall trees.

Google talk on green consumption by Bruce Cahan at Stanford (who is starting a bank for California.)

Audio

Adam Werbach, co-Founder of Yerdle.com, a site where friends can share and swap items; also the author of "Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto," and the founder and CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S, a global sustainability agency specializing in sustainability consulting, brand activation and employee engagement. Katy Wolk-Stanley, The Non Consumer Advocate; she blogs at thenonconsumeradvocate.com where she tracks her commitment to not buying anything new for the past five years.

David de Rothschild Sets Sail on Plastic Ship Plastiki to Pacific Gyre "Great Garbage Patch" Gyre slideshow. recent local audio interview and links. See also Solid Waste page. UCSC video of deep sea plastic. Capt. Moore video

Head of San Francisco's Department of the Environment, Jared Blumenfeld helped devise groundbreaking and sometimes controversial initiatives such as mandatory composting and a ban on plastic bags. Last month, he was named head of the federal Environmental Protection Agency's regional office. 2/10

Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory 1.6.12 Mike Daisey was a self-described "worshipper in the cult of Mac." Then he saw some photos from a new iPhone, taken by workers at the factory where it was made. Mike wondered: Who makes all my crap? He traveled to China to find out. From NPR's This American Life.

Retail Therapy? Psychologists at San Francisco State University say people reported feeling happier when they spent their money on experiences -- spending on a meal out or theater tickets, perhaps -- rather than buying material objects.

Daniel Goleman, psychologist, science journalist and author of Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything and Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence. Interview Website

Deborah Nieman on her new book, Ecothrifty: Cheaper, Greener Choices for a Happier, Healthier Life. (interview). 10/12.